Identical twins head for college at 16

By The Associated Press
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ORFORDVILLE (AP) - They can finish each other's sentences. And, their looks can confuse strangers.

But it's their academic accomplishments that make identical twins Marina and Haley Gookin stand out from the crowd. The girls have compiled high school grade point averages above 4.0 and are headed for Boston University this fall at age 16.

The Orfordville twins joke that they've spent much of their high school in their pajamas. They will graduate next week from the online school Wisconsin Virtual Academy after turning to more challenging online studies, including four Advanced Placement courses.

After sharing a bedroom while growing up, the twins won't bunk together at BU. They knew they wanted to go to the same college but not share the same dorm room, Haley told the Janesville Gazette.

"We requested specifically, 'Don't put us together. If you do, you're only going to have one twin left by the end of the year,'" Marina said jokingly.

The teens were drawn to Boston, an area with more than 250,000 college students. They wound up at Boston University because "they're the ones that accepted us that were farthest from home that we could afford," Marina joked.

"They want to move out. They want to be adventurous," said mom Jennifer Gookin. And since they're headed to the same place, they'll have each other, she added.